


Standing on the Rooftops

by MeAndTheBoys



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Childhood Friends, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Friendship/Love, M/M, Plot, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-26 09:59:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10784565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeAndTheBoys/pseuds/MeAndTheBoys
Summary: A twelve year old Dean Winchester moves into a new home with his father and younger brother. As he is begrudgingly unpacking his belongings, he notices a boy standing on the roof of the adjacent house.





	1. Beyond the Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure where this is going but it will get angsty and sad and adorable, so be ready. I'll change the rating when things get steamy (i.e. there will be no underage sex in this fic)

The stairs grumbled under the soles of Dean’s beat up old converse, complaining with each step he took but he didn’t care because he didn’t want to be there anyway. The stairs could complain all they wanted and he’d still be moving in. No amount of protest would change that-- he’d tried already. So he carried his box of knick-knacks, all of the important things that he didn’t trust his dad to move with care, up the whining steps and into his room.

Leaning a shoulder against the door frame, notches in the wooden frame, paint chipped carelessly away, he examined the small space. There was a closet in the corner, marks in the entry indicating that there was once a door but all that remained were the marks from the hinges. The wooden floor was nothing to marvel at, scuffed and stained from years of rough treatment. Even the walls looked like they’d seen their fair share trouble; nail holes came in little clusters and paint was torn away in little squares from where posters once hung.

It was almost better than living in the Impala, jumping from motel to motel.

Almost. 

Compared to the rest of the neighbourhood, and in stark contrast to the immediately surrounding houses, the place was a wreck. The siding was old and worn from weather and age, the roof needed patching, the deck was falling apart. Even the front door needed work. Dean had suggested they paint it red because it would stand out and, if Sam ever got lost, he’d be able to find it no problem. His dad agreed and said that they’d go get some paint the following day. 

“Home sweet home,” Dean hummed to himself, putting down the box, wondering when he’d be getting a bed and a dresser. Given how long it had taken them to get the house, he wasn’t holding his breath.

“Yeah, it’s kind of stinky, though. Not sweet,” Sam, his eight year old brother, replied-- despite not having been addressed in the first place. The kid was smart and kind, but he had a habit of injecting himself into Dean’s business. That being said, Dean prized his relationship with his brother, seeing Sam’s well being as his responsibility, and was always kind in return, not matter how much the kid bothered him.

After several hours of work, his dad coming and going with odds and ends and furniture, the origins of which Dean never questioned, the house was starting to seem livable. He wasn’t ready to call it home, but it was getting there. Returning to his room, belly fully of greasy fast food, Dean started hanging his shirts up on wire hangers, placing them on the metal bar in the closet. With each shirt he placed, sliding in the hanger and buttoning the top button, he wondered why he was hanging things he was just going to wear anyway and ultimately tossed the pile of clothes into the corner of the closet. 

“They’ll wrinkle if you do that, y’know,” a voice called out, muffled and distant. 

Dean turned around, lip curled up into a sneer, nostril quirked and brows furrowed as he sought out the owner of the voice, quickly seeing a figure beyond his window. The glass was dirty like the smeared and smudged lower half of aquarium glass, messy from the hands of excited small children. Until that moment, Dean hadn’t even payed attention to the window or the fact that it was only several feet away from the window of the house next door. Infringing upon his privacy. 

Glancing back, not seeing his father or brother, Dean approached the window and pulled it open, struggling for a moment before placing his foot on the sill for leverage. Abruptly, the window lifted. It slid up and he stumbled back. All the while, the boy stood on the section of roofing just outside of his own window and watched, a curious grin on his face. 

“No one’s lived in there for a while,” the boy said, messy brown hair blowing as a gust broke the still air. 

“Well, I’m living here now,” Dean replied. He looked out of the window and noticed a section of roof matching the one of the adjacent house. But, uncertain he would be capable of making a graceful exit, he stayed inside of his room. 

“Neat. I’m Cas,” the boy introduced, wiping his hand on his brown corduroy trousers and leaping the four inch wide gap between their respective roofs. “And you should really hang up your clothes because they’ll wrinkle and your mom will probably not like that. I know mine doesn’t.”

While the boy seemed friendly, a small smile ever present on his face, blue eyes attentive and interested, Dean was already fed up with the interaction. He was a self proclaimed loner, outgoing by nature but stubborn to the core. Family was his primary value and even that had been long since shattered. Drawing in a deep breath, shoulders pulling up as his chest rose, Dean sighed and replied, “Yeah whatever. I’m Dean and my mom’s dead. So I don’t think she really gives a crap about wrinkly clothes.” 

A silence, heavy and awkward, lingered. Cas’ mouth was slightly ajar as he worked out what to say, arm bent behind his back, hand itching needlessly over his shirt. “I’m really sorry about that,” he finally replied, offering a sympathetic and pleasant look in hopes of clearing the air. “But, um, it’s good to meet you, Dean.” 

Shrugging, Dean walked toward his closet and looked at the pile of jeans. Thinking back, he wasn’t even sure if his mother would have cared about the wrinkles or not, it had been so long since he’d seen her. He was only four when she had died and he had to assume that she put his clothes away herself at that time. Even if she did care, Dean decided, he wouldn’t have hung them up. Turning back to Cas, Dean stared, tired. “Yeah, look, I don’t have blinds so could you try not to just hang out by my window. It’s kind of weird,” he insisted.

“Sure,” Cas replied, disheartened by the way the interaction was progressing. “Hey, you should come out. It’s super cool out here!” 

Shaking his head and chuckling, Dean walked back to the window and leaned against the sill. “I’ll have to pass, can’t be that cool anyway,” he argued, eyes betraying his words as he obviously wondered what the view was like and just how far from the ground they were. 

A woman’s voice sung out from Cas’s open window and the boy turned his head toward the sound. “Coming mom!” He shouted before looking at Dean, pausing, and then responding, “Whatever you say! I think it’s lots of fun. I’ll talk to you later, Dean.”

And just like that, Cas scampered back over to his own roof and swiftly ducked through the window. Then shutting it behind him, they boy disappeared out of view. Still contemplating the roof and the view and the strange neighbour boy who seemed to think they’d be talking again, Dean went over to his closet and started to fold the jeans. Then he hung the rest of the shirts before sitting in the middle of his room with a box of old comic books. 

Every so often, his gaze would wander up to the lit window across the way and he would catch a glimpse of Cas. But he didn’t move. He kept his belly planted against the floor until the light went out and his own house fell silent.

As soon as he felt alone, sure that no one would wake up and catch him, Dean folded the comic book and slid it into the back pocket of his jeans before going over to the window. It opened with ease this time around. For several seconds, he stood and assessed the effort required to hoist himself out, peering into Cas’ room and seeing the red outline of the time on a digital clock. Then, swinging his leg over the ledge, he straddled the sill. The exit was easier than he had expected and, bringing his other leg over, he was soon on the roof. 

From in his room, Cas watched, laughing to himself as Dean stood and took in the view. It wasn’t magnificent, but being so high up was liberating and Dean couldn’t help but smile before sitting down and resuming his reading.


	2. Family Values

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite Dean's obvious hesitation, Cas makes an effort to build a new friendship.

When Dean awoke the sky was a watercolour wash of pink and periwinkle. His back ached, neck stiff as he sat up, pulling himself away from the siding of the house he had fell asleep against the previous night. The comic book was resting on the roof several inches from his side and he grabbed it before pressing a flat palm into the wall and leveraging himself upright. 

From the his bed, Cas watched. Smiling. 

Like he’d aged twenty years in the few hours he had been sleeping, Dean groaned and stretched. Reaching through the still-open window and dropping the comic book into his room, he took a moment to watch the sunrise with a building sense of nostalgia. He’d seen this before. This wonderful sky like a painting on the windshield of his dad’s impala, bird poop and splattered bugs staining the natural masterpiece as the smell of leftover fast food filled his nostrils. Taking a deep breath, Dean smelled freshly cut grass and morning dew. It was fresh. Clean. Turning to the house across from where he was standing, as he looked at the numbers on the clock in the neighbouring room, he saw Cas staring his way. The boy’s grin widened and he slipped out of bed. His hair stood up in a marvellous gravity defying display and he quickly went over to the window, opening it and leaning his elbows against the white painted sill. 

“I told you, it’s really nice right?” He said, clearly pleased. 

Dean shrugged and looked back toward his own room, tucking his hands into his pockets and poking his finger into the hole that had come from leaving an open pocket knife in his jeans when they went through the wash. His finger prodded and widened the tear. “It’s nothin’ that great,” he replied. 

The air was cold against Cas’ bare arms, breeze snaking its way through the arm holes of his Star Wars T-shirt. However, he didn’t mind. Silently and unflinchingly, he stared at Dean, imagining that he looked the way his mother did when something went awry between him and his siblings and she wanted one of them to confess. His head was cocked gently to the side, brows quirked up in the centre while his eyes drilled a faux-knowing gaze into Dean’s forehead. Unfortunately, the expression he was actually offering the other boy was nothing like the one he was seeing in his head. Nothing like his mother’s truth provoking stare. The knowing smirk confused Dean who was standing uncomfortably waiting for Cas to speak or move or really do anything. 

“Uh, ok then, I think I’m going to...go now,” Dean hummed, taking a step backward. Then he turned around and climbed back through his window as Cas replied with a soft, “Later.”

\------

Cas remained at his window, leaning his head out and resting it to the side, ear pressed against his bony shoulder, as he watched the sun rise higher into the sky. He remained this way for several long seconds until clamouring voices, initially distant, grew louder and nearer.

His door flung open and several children of various ages, each practically climbing over the others, entered the room. They shouted and argued, good natured and playfully. The oldest of the bunch, older than Cas, wearing a small child like a backpack, approached the sill and tugged on the back of Cas’ shirt. “Hey, snap out of it. You’ll get trapped in that busy head of yours if you’re not careful,” the boy warned, his own laughter enhanced by the giggling of the girl on his back.

“Oh hush, Gabe,” he replied. “I was just getting ready to come down anyway.” 

Gabriel looked through the open window, seeing the boxes in the room of the previously unoccupied house as Cas walked to his closet to grab a hoodie. “Huh, look at that. Someone bought that junky place,” Gabe remarked, his observation being cut short by a knee jab to the side. 

“Go, horse, go!” Anna insisted, kicking him again. 

With a loud neigh, rearing back but holding the girl such that she wouldn’t fall, Gabriel left, the other children bursting out behind him. Seemingly unconcerned by all of the commotion, Cas slid on his slippers, looked into Dean’s room one last time, and then departed into the hallway for breakfast.

\-----

As soon as Dean heard the noise through his open window, he ducked back against the wall, out of sight. His own house was silent. There was no excited shouting or playful banter. The smell of breakfast didn’t beckon him into the hallway, no bacon and eggs and fresh store-bought preserves all forming a brilliant odour to summon him to a happy and energetic table. In his head, he imagined that Cas’ family was something out of the movies. All smiling as they passed a heap of bacon on a plate until everyone had a full platter of home cooked food, parents watching fondly as siblings fought for seconds. 

The floorboards creaked briefly before his own house fell silent again, the distant chatter of the neighbours still flooding into his room, and Dean couldn’t tell if it was just the house or if someone was awake. There was a second creak. Then another pause. Finally, the floors groaned several more times and the door handle jiggled. 

“Dean?” Sam called out as he opened the door. 

“Yeah, what? What do you want?” Dean replied, walking to shut his window just in time to hear Gabriel’s comment about their home. For a moment, he hated having moved in almost impossibly more than he had the previous day.

“I’m pretty hungry. Think we can get some food?” Sam asked. Dean nodded and replied, “Yeah, of course. Let’s go.” And both boys headed down the stairs, sneaking past their father’s room, and went into the living area. On the floor, covering up scuff marks and chipped wooden floorboards, there were several empty beer bottles that Dean had to nudge out of the way with his shoe as if to hide them from Sam. Though both boys were privy to the way that their father had been coping with their mother’s death. Then, without a word exchanged between them, the brothers left the house.

As they reached the end of the block, they heard a shout, the thud of running footsteps approaching. 

“Hey, Dean!” Cas called out, coming to a stop and resting his hands on his pyjama covered knees. “Dean,” he repeated. “Uh, I thought you might want to meet my siblings and my parents. And, uh, I don’t know, maybe you could come have some breakfast with us. We always have plenty.” 

Sam smiled widely and then turned to Dean, his smile diminishing as he saw the stubborn and irritated look on his brother’s face. “Come on, Dean, we gotta meet the neighbours,” Sam insisted, whispering. Finally averting his attention from Cas to Sam, Dean glared. “We were going out to breakfast,” he stated plainly, hearing Gabriel’s comments about the house ring in his head. The last thing he needed was to spend his morning being judged by people who thought he was less than they were.

“Please, Dean. We didn’t even get that much money and who knows how far the diner is,” Sam whined, slumping dramatically. 

“Whatever, fine,” Dean replied, turning his gaze to Cas. “Just, uh, don’t think that this makes us friends, alright.” Cas laughed and shrugged his shoulders as he turned back down the sidewalk, returning to his house with the Winchester boys in tow.


End file.
